Why dieppe raid was successful

Struggling to come ashore amid heavy enemy fire, both groups failed. The main assault force landed on the beach in front of Dieppe. It too was hit hard. Small groups of infantry made it off the beach and into the town, where they hunkered down until they were killed or forced to surrender.

Of the 29 tanks that tried to land, 27 made it to the beach, many becoming bogged down by the "chert" — the gravel-like rocks that make up Dieppe's beach — immobilizing the tanks by gumming up their tracks. Fifteen tanks did make it off the beach, but their guns were unable to destroy German fortifications. More than Canadians were dead and hundreds more wounded.

The dead included several Canadian pilots engaged in fighter battles with the Luftwaffe, the German air force, above Dieppe. Several hundred British and American airmen, soldiers and sailors were also killed or injured in the fighting. When the order was given to withdraw, fewer than half the Canadians who departed for Dieppe made it back to England. Among the survivors, 1, Canadians were taken prisoner. Dieppe was a humiliation for the Allies and a tragedy for those killed, seriously wounded or taken prisoner.

The assault began with landings east and west of the town by commando units with orders to destroy a German radar installation and knock out coast artillery positions. Thirty minutes later, the main force, supported by Churchill tanks, struck Dieppe head on. Most of the infantry were pinned down by German gun emplacements, undetected by Allied intelligence, which trapped them in a remorseless crossfire.

Within a few hours, overwhelmed by horrific losses and the near collapse of inter-unit communications, the commanders on shore gave the order to withdraw. The cost of the raid was appalling. Nearly a thousand Canadians were killed; hundreds more were wounded. Another 2, became prisoners of war. All in all, casualties reached 60 percent.

And yet within weeks of this debacle, the Allied high command portrayed the Dieppe raid as a success: expensive, to be sure, but priceless in terms of lessons learned. This appraisal was voiced even more emphatically by Lord Louis Mountbatten, whose Combined Operations Command had planned and executed the raid.

Mountbatten even persuaded the journalists who had witnessed the raid to present Dieppe in the most favorable possible light. The lessons learned at Dieppe had saved thousands of lives in the Normandy invasion. It made no sense, for example, to expect the Cameron Highlanders to go eight kilometres inland, presumably in contact with the Germans the whole way, and then to return to the coast for embarkation, all in a few hours.

It was foolish to depend on surprise above all, and extremely foolish to go on with the attack once surprise was lost. It was hopelessly unrealistic to count on luck to make up for failures in planning. Those failures in planning were huge, but there were more. It was utmost stupidity to attack a defended port where cliffs and headlands dominated the beaches.

Where else would the Germans put their firepower? Did no one think? It was as if Dieppe was on the far side of the planet where none had ever travelled, rather than being just across the English Channel, a day trip that English visitors had taken for decades.

Dieppe was an object lesson on how not to mount an amphibious assault. The Germans thought so, too. Back in England, nothing mattered except that reputations be saved.

The Dieppe raid became a model of how to spin the facts, as historian Timothy Balzer has conclusively demonstrated. Combined Operations Headquarters instantly claimed that the raid had been a great achievement and learning experience, and they held to that line even after the casualty lists became public.

General Crerar said much the same, and, understandably perhaps, so have most Dieppe survivors, not wanting their comrades to have been thrown away for nothing. Historians and the Canadian public have largely parroted the same arguments, perhaps because the idea of a Canadian defeat, any Canadian defeat, is just too hard to swallow.

On the other hand, some now look on Mountbatten as utterly unqualified for his role, a man protected by his royal connections and public relations minions. The key question, however, remains: Did the lessons learned from Operation Jubilee pave the way for D-Day, June 6, ? Yes, to some extent. After Dieppe, everyone recognized the need for better planning and a clearer chain of command.

Operation Overlord — the name for the invasion of Europe that began with the D-Day landing — satisfied those requirements. There was heavy bombing, though it was not hugely successful in destroying beach defences. There was massive naval gun support, which was successful.

There were better landing craft and specialized armoured vehicles, and the assault troops were far better trained. All of those things would likely have happened even without the Dieppe raid. And instead of landing at a fortified port, the D-Day invasion went in over open beaches, and the Allies brought their artificial port, Mulberry, with them. Some lessons were learned, but most of them were lessons that had been mastered before.

Merritt bravely led his men over the Pourville bridge and later commanded a rearguard that allowed some troops to escape. Both were taken prisoner. German casualties were light, other than the 48 aircraft lost after the Luftwaffe was drawn into battle. Allied commanders knew the raid was risky. But none imagined it would be such a terrible failure, with so much loss of life.

The planners believed the element of surprise would allow landing troops to overcome German defenders and occupy the town, before withdrawing. Little thought was given to the importance of air superiority and the need for overwhelming firepower, including artillery support from naval warships. The assaulting infantry had only light destroyers firing at the Germans from offshore; no battleships or cruisers were made available for the raid, nor heavy bombers overhead. Instead, strategists put their faith in the power of tanks.

Tanks had spearheaded the German blitzkrieg across Europe in Two years later, tanks were seen as providing a crucial advantage in modern warfare. More than two dozen tanks would land on Dieppe's beaches beside the infantry, and this, planners said, would make all the difference. However, of the 29 tanks that attempted to land, only 15 made it off the beaches and reached the town's promenade. Their guns were not powerful enough to knock out German fortifications.

Said Second World War historian Terry Copp: "Army planners were still mesmerized by the vision of tanks as the decisive weapon of war, and surprise as a substitute for overwhelming firepower. Despite its failure, the raid provided valuable lessons for the Allies. It erased the idea that surprise and tanks were enough to succeed in an amphibious assault against occupied France.

Two years later, the D-Day landings would be backed up by massive naval artillery support, dominance over the skies, and heavy firepower — three essential factors missing at Dieppe. Dieppe also made clear the difficulties of assaulting a well-defended port, as well as the need for better intelligence on beach conditions and German defences, better communication between infantry on the beach and commanders offshore, and the need for specialized landing craft and tanks able to overcome beach obstacles.

These lessons would be implemented in later amphibious assaults in North Africa, Italy, and Normandy. The sacrifices of Canadians at Dieppe are well remembered. Few Canadian military engagements have been as attentively researched and documented by historians.